


thyme, willow, rue

by TheGoodDoctor



Series: stately progress through the stars [1]
Category: Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Multi, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, author uses and abuses canon as convenient, victorians are unable to communicate their feelings like at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 18:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19446832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: It had been supposed, for many years, that those favoured by God were Marked.On love, and having it too.





	thyme, willow, rue

**Author's Note:**

> i have listened to ms mulligan and mr sheen sing together approximately five thousand and three times. i would recommend at least one re-listen before/during/after reading this, in part just because, you know. pretty.
> 
> this is, obviously, an au; i have used and adapted the story as pleases me.

It had been supposed, for many years, that those favoured by God were Marked. This supposition seemed fair; only some, not all, were Marked, that they might easier find their one true love, and who else could bestow such a gift? Over time, the idea morphed and altered to be that only noble men and women were Marked, aided in no small part by the writings and teachings of the nobles themselves. For were not the fortunate made so by the favour of God? and must they not therefore be favoured in other ways, too?

Since the age of chivalry, and Marked knights finding their Marked maidens in towers guarded by dragons, the concept has changed again and is now rather more accurate: some people are Marked and others not, without rhyme or reason, whether they want it or no. But the ideal remains, and there are no small number of men and women who grumble in their little cottages, thumbing their Marks and cursing that their birthright of nobility, Marked upon them, had not been granted.

Gabriel’s mother had tutted so about the dark bouquet inked upon his left shoulder, tumbling down almost to his elbow. “You should be up in yon big house. Not out with the sheep, living no better than the dog.”

He had only shrugged; he was just a boy, and did not mind it. He thought the dog lived rather well, and would rather be out here than stuffed up inside. Gabriel had seen the master of that house, and his boy - all dark curls and heavy brow, in truth less a boy and nearly a man, half-attending his tutor and really staring out of the window - and thinks they would be rather the better for it, if they spent more time out of doors than in. He can’t spend too long looking in, though, else his mother will start up again about the boys’ swapping places, but every so often they catch eyes through the glass; and Gabriel offers a shy wave, and the lad grins, and his whole face lights up, round and cheerful under angelic curls, and returns the wave ever so slightly, barely visible from the ivy that crawls and chokes around the window.

And then he is chided by his tutor and by the time he looks back out, seeking the weatherbeaten child some years his junior but strangely interesting to him, the boy is gone; and young Master Boldwood returns to his lessons with a frown and even less interest than he had had before.

* * *

Gabriel’s mother fusses when, a fair few years later, his Mark changes. She says it only proves how much he is owed and that God is displeased that he hasn’t got it. Privately, he disagrees; he’s never heard of such a thing before. But for the first time, he wishes to believe her right: because after saying so she coughs, horribly, and how he wishes he were the lad in the window, with a father at home and money enough to get a doctor that might save his mother.

He hates the boy he had seen in that grand house, then; but not long after Gabriel’s mother passes, the boy - though he’s not a boy now but a man full-grown, old enough to wear a suit of full black and stand alone in the rain, long after the other mourners have huddled home under umbrellas, at the foot of his father’s grave. He’s the only Mr Boldwood now, and Gabriel - the only Mr Oak since he was just a baby - is sorry for it.

Mr Boldwood looks up, and then suddenly at Gabriel, as deliberately as if Gabriel had made a sound to ask him to. Under the heavy weight of those eyes, infinitely sadder than Gabriel ever thought of them, Gabriel no longer feels, as he has these past few years, like a man: instead, faced with this - this gentleman who has such terrible sorrow yet a perfectly straight spine and a neat beard and a smart suit, Gabriel feels like the boy, not yet quite grown, that he is.

He offers Mr Boldwood a shy wave, and sees in return a grin which, despite the driving rain and heavy pall of sorrow, is quite unexpectedly bright. The man raises his hat a little, and Gabriel wishes he had had such a grown-up gesture to offer instead of a silly, childish wave; but the movement allows a handful of curls to spring briefly free and suddenly the man looks as he had, barely grown and framed in ivy with a sunshine smile.

The bouquet on his arm is thicker, fuller; where empty spaces had been now are tiny leaves, twining with those that had been there before. The new leaves even coax a tiny, nervous bloom out from the inside of his elbow; but Gabriel has sheep and dogs and no time to care for anything but these and himself. He hasn’t anything to offer whoever it is blooming and growing under his shirt; they would be better off, doubtless, with the handsome young Mr Boldwood, with his acres of land and beautiful sad eyes.

* * *

He isn’t sure why he had ever thought she was his love.

Of course, he loves her, and that is why; that is why he had risked his heart on her hand. But the Mark comes in when one’s love is born, and Gabriel had been born with leaves running up and down his arm, and Miss Everdene is quite some years younger than himself. But he knows no older ladies and had truly believed that perhaps they would be happy together despite not being _destined_ ; many are, after all. One cannot choose one’s Mark, but one can choose where one loves.

Or so Gabriel had thought. And, though it curse him and hurt him, still would think; he cannot be compelled to simply give up on her. His heart will not let him, much though he would like it to.

Perhaps, in the end, it is for the best. With the sheep all driven to their deaths and everything - _everything_ \- sold to pay his debts, he has nothing at all to give her. He had promised her a farm, and children, and a piano, and she had said no; he dreads to think what she would say now, when he has nothing but the shirt on his back to recommend him, and the Mark underneath it to prove him someone else’s.

But he stays and works for her, when she asks. Goes when she bids him, too, and is back in a heartbeat when she deigns to beg him for his help. He’d probably do it anyway; he can’t stand to see sheep dying without need, or shepherds turned out with nothing to their name. But she asks him nicely, and says she needs him, and he tries to believe that that’s enough.

Gabriel watches her talk politely with Mr Boldwood, and say she values his judgement; and Gabriel watches him try to believe that that’s enough, too.

* * *

He says Miss Everdene will not sully her pretty dress with sheepdip. He should have known she’d do anything to prove men wrong.

But he hadn’t thought about that, and now Bathsheba is up to her neat waist in water at his side. Her skirts bloom around her in the water, he can feel the calico drift against his leg, and desperate to think of anything but the closeness, the swirling skirts, the intransient barrier of water, Gabriel looks at her face. Her hair is all tucked away, porcelain cheekbones and jawline warm and bronzing in the early summer sun, and her eyes are dancing as if she is always laughing, inside, at him and the world and her own mischievous joy. Bathsheba grins, triumphant over his presupposing, and this distraction is no good at all.

Gabriel looks away, unable to help his own answering smile. He can’t help anything around her, it seems; he puts his foot in his mouth, or he watches and smiles, quite powerless, like a lovelorn fool.

Like Mr Boldwood is now. Gabriel hadn’t noticed him earlier, but here he stands - buttoned up in a suit and black gloves, curls swept back in the wind, and a little endeared smile lightening his face. He’s watching Bathsheba, and maybe Gabriel too, and looking entirely powerlessly affectionate, as if the sight of Miss Everdene wrestling a sodden sheep has made him quite forget how to be anything but adoring.

Gabriel ducks his head as Liddy flutters off to receive him, and it’s not until Miss Everdene has dripped off to the house to change that he discovers the very same helplessly endeared smile plastered across his own face.

* * *

But then he hears about the valentine, and he hates it. Not her, but what she does; he never could hate her, even when it would be easier to feel something like it. She had said that he would learn to despise her, but he doesn’t, not at all. He despises how she makes Mr Boldwood wait, saying no then yes then maybe; he, Gabriel, rests in sad security, but Mr Boldwood upon sharp nails of hope that Gabriel fears she will dash.

He tells her so, and she doesn’t like it. Of course. But he doesn’t tell her the truth with the aim of her liking it; it is beneath her to behave as she has, and she hurts Mr Boldwood far more than he would believe her capable. But perhaps she learns from their quarrel, because Mr Boldwood is received with greater kindness, and Gabriel thinks that perhaps something will come of it, after all.

There’s a peculiar pain that comes with Miss Everdene being courted by Mr Boldwood, and Gabriel cannot place it. He loves her, so of course it will cause him hurt to see her with another man, but there’s an additional stinging to Mr Boldwood’s loving her than there might be with another. Perhaps it is the lost youth that he mourns; if Mr Boldwood is old enough - in truth, more than old enough - to be courting, then he is not that young man in the ivy wrapped window. He doesn’t grin like he used to, as a boy, and his heavy brow remains stern over his hurt-heavy eyes. After a time, when Gabriel finally accepts that there are worse men she might choose and further she might go from him than the farm next door, he wishes that her pretty face and prettier smiles might coax one of those old sunshine grins from Mr Boldwood, and make him look younger and more handsome and more like someone Miss Everdene might love. Gabriel thinks that a woman who can resist such a grin doesn’t deserve its owner, and he thinks that perhaps the two of them might be well-enough suited to one another. Boldwood can keep her in far greater comfort than Gabriel ever might, and he’s so smitten with her charms: the way she smiles and ducks her head, the way her chin tilts as she defies people to underestimate her, the way she is stubborn and kind and headstrong and sweet all at once. Mr Boldwood _can_ keep her as she wishes, and more importantly, he will.

* * *

He gets up for Boldwood and gives up his seat as the head of the table, man of the hour. He could have saved a thousand sheep and Boldwood would still get that chair. Gabriel sits amongst the workers, just a face on a crowded bench, and gives up the view down the cosy table of Miss Everdene to Mr Boldwood without complaint, just as he ought.

He doesn’t even begrudge it much; Boldwood has this gravitas, this bearing, such that anyone would get up for him without thinking. He’s earned it, too, with his work and his wisdom. Mr William Boldwood is a man to be respected and he has a far greater claim to status than Gabriel Oak. It doesn’t hurt to let _this_ man take his place at the table, and it doesn’t hurt so much as he thought it might to let him take his place in Batsheba’s heart.

From here, he is just as close and just as far from them both. He fancies that their eyes catch on his own more often than might be natural, and attempts to ignore the curling, coiling something snatching at his heart.

Bathsheba sings, and Gabriel nearly swoons.

His head fills abruptly with visions of a room to call their own, full of music: the piano he had promised her and her voice light on the air. He sees a toddling child, and a sleeping babe cradled in her arms, and he leans on the edge of this dream and watches and listens and _wants._

He turns just as fast as everyone else - faster, even - when Mr Boldwood joins in. It fairly knocks the breath out of him in a quiet gasp; the soft humming, then the rolling, rumbling bass he had long listened out for in church. But it’s different here; gentler, more personal, easy to pick out and enjoy. They sound so very good together, and smile with such delight at doing so, that Gabriel has to put his head down and stare at his plate for a moment.

The little room comes back to him, but now - now Boldwood creeps in and catches up the toddling child, sweeping the laughing child up to his shoulders and beaming that sunshine smile. Bathsheba watches him approach, tipping her face up to receive her kiss and allow him to bestow one upon the baby - their baby. The room is sunlit, warm, filled with anything and everything that might increase the comfort of those within; and through it all Miss Everdene and Mr Boldwood sing softly, adoringly, of thyme and willow and rue.

The bouquet on his skin begins to burn pleasantly, but Gabriel ignores the sweet pain to watch the gentle family scene before his inner eyes. He knows the song of old; his mother had sung it to him as a child and bittersweet homesickness tugs at him for a moment. Gabriel remembers her voice, still singing even as she was dying of thyme and rue and smoothing her hand down his arm as she did so; she had always called the song his, especially when the second part of his mark came in and thyme laced and wove through the reaching stems of rue.

The scene in his head brings him peace, even as he sees no place in it for himself. Little curly-haired children with laughing, mischievous eyes tumbling about the place is good enough for him. Until Mr Boldwood and Miss Everdene turn as one to look straight at him and smile their merry sunshine smiles, and Gabriel is floored by the force of his desire, and the music stops. He joins the clapping a moment late, and looks away from their beautiful, bashful, delighted grins as the bottom drops out of the world.

* * *

Her marriage to the soldier is a boot to his stomach.

It leaves him gasping, curled in on his pain in the night. She could have had anyone, anyone in the world; she could have had beaming children with angelic curls; and she chose Troy. Because of a sob story about a Mark that abandoned him. Gabriel could kick and scream and snarl, if he weren’t so busy working himself to the bone so that he sleeps soundly, like the dead, and doesn’t dream of the wrong hands upon her skin. It had been bad enough to dream of Boldwood, and of sheets softened by love and care, hands that are strong but careful; those had left him gasping and hurt and confused. Troy leaves him shaking with rage.

Mr Boldwood fares little better than he; in fact, Gabriel is tempted to call him worse. He says he is a laughing stock, a joke to the village, with such determined calm that Gabriel cannot bear to say anything. Not that he would know what to say or how to say it: _no, sir, not so. The men hate Troy, and they are half-minded to hate her for marrying him. They do not laugh at you, sir, they pity you. As I pity you. And as I pity her, and me, for having Troy when we could have had you._

And Mr Boldwood smiles at him, and Gabriel notices with a stab of searing sorrow and absolute, terrible fury, that the smile he so values is dampened with sparkling tears that Boldwood cannot, will not allow to fall. Gabriel could rip Troy to shreds for it, and tear Miss Ever- Mrs Troy a new one, too - only Mr Boldwood would hate it beyond measure, and so he doesn’t. But he has no comfort to offer him, either.

The flower on the inside of his elbow is wilting, and Gabriel thinks this might be the end of the world.

* * *

Troy dies. Gabriel runs two farms now, and Mr Boldwood smiles more, because Miss Everdene has indicated to him that she will, perhaps, marry him. If only to avoid another Troy, Gabriel hopes that she will; the bright white smiles on both their faces and difficult dreams of music-filled rooms have little to do with it, truly. And he has Old George back at his heel, faithful as ever, and sometimes Gabriel has to just bury his face in the soft familiar fur and smile.

Gabriel goes away on some business for the farms for a day and comes back to a staff unusually glad to see him. “He was awful cross all yesterday,” the cook tells him sharply, jutting her chin in the vague direction of the rest of the house.

Gabriel frowns. “I tell you,” one of the labourers adds around his pipe, “if you ‘adn’t come back I don’t dare think what I might ‘ave said to him. I don’t know how you do it.”

He can’t remember ever having a cross word from Boldwood, not one in all the years they’ve known one another; but he doesn’t say as much. The staff wouldn’t appreciate the distinction, and as soon as he steps out into the yard there’s a cry and trotting feet and he’s only just turned around when Boldwood is clapping him on the shoulder and offering up a sunshine smile.

“Gabriel! Mr Oak, I am delighted to have you back. How was your business?”

And for a moment, Gabriel cannot quite breathe. Over Boldwood’s shoulder, where his eyes alight once burned and stunned by the sunshine smile and curls lit bronze in the late autumn afternoon, is Miss Everdene, slender and smart, and she’s smiling too, like it pleases her that the men like each other. Under Boldwood’s sturdy palm his Mark is warmed from within, and Gabriel abruptly wants to tell Miss Everdene that if their liking one another pleases her then she ought to be well pleased; she ought to be delighted, in fact, because Gabriel-

Gabriel loves Mr Boldwood, and Miss Everdene.

The realisation leaves him blinking and stunned, quite unable to move, even as Bathsheba trips over to complete the triangle. Boldwood turns his beam on her, too, and then back at Gabriel as if to say _see? He's back - aren't you glad?_

"Gabriel," Miss Everdene says warmly. "You've been missed." She turns her sparkling eyes and carefully stifled laughter upon Mr Boldwood, who rolls his eyes and huffs a little until she giggles properly, pressing a hand to his arm. He looks at her like she hung the stars purely for his benefit - a little wistful, too - and then they are both of them looking at him, Gabriel, and it's so very like his vision that he fancies he can almost hear laughing children and two voices soft on the breeze.

"Excuse me," he says, voice strained and face too tight to muster much of a smile. The smile starts to slide away from Boldwood and he looks to Bathsheba, worried. She frowns at Gabriel, but he will not stop. "I've much to do." Gabriel steps back, away from the visions and futures that cannot be his, the people who smile too softly at him and cannot be his, the couple who are engaged and _cannot be his._

Boldwood's hand slides off Gabriel's shoulder, down his Mark. His whole arm screams, burning hot-cold and angry as Bathsheba folds her arms crossly before her. Mr Boldwood's hand settles on his own forearm, where her hand had been, and his thumb rubs at it like it stings. Bathsheba’s fingers clench and unclench under her elbow.

Gabriel nods shortly at them. They aren't his, and cannot ever be; Bathsheba will be Boldwood's wife and Gabriel nothing but their bailiff. No matter how much his arm aches or George whines or Bathsheba, usually so certain, chews her lip or Boldwood, usually so steady, shifts his weight from foot to foot.

He leaves them in the yard in the sun and heads into the cool of the servants' corridors.

* * *

He gets better at hiding. Gabriel spends long, long days out in the fields with the men and must be sought by his employers, once they give up on waiting for his usual daily report over a small glass of something before bed. It had been easy, before, to sink into Boldwood’s settee, turning the cut glass in his hands to watch the light change and move; too easy to watch Miss Everdene balance her chin on her hand, propped up on the sofa arm to better listen to Mr Boldwood; too easy to get lost in the way the firelight turns her hair to burning gold or in the rolling tones of Boldwood’s grand, practical plans for the future.

Now, Gabriel cannot trust himself not to do something he oughtn’t. Boldwood knows, certainly, that he still loves Bathsheba, and had once asked for her hand; Bathsheba would be foolish indeed if she thought he didn’t still care for her. But they cannot and must not know how he feels for William - Mr Boldwood - for he has no desire to leave the farms in disgrace, in terrified flight, or in shackles.

But he cannot escape them, not entirely. If he stays out in the fields, Boldwood will bring two stoneware bottles of cider and a grin out to him, and they’ll stand in the early encroaching dark until Gabriel gives in and forces them into the sitting room so that Boldwood can lean, with forced nonchalance, so closely against the fireplace as to be almost in danger of injury and Miss Everdene can question Gabriel long enough for both men to warm through. When the weather turns yet colder and Gabriel has to brush snow out of his hair before heading inside to bed, Miss Everdene will catch him and drag him - often quite literally, her tiny fingers gripping tightly to his arm - into her home instead before Boldwood rides back to his farm for the night. Gabriel’s rooms always feel cold, this winter; he tells himself that his employers keep bigger, better fires, and the warmth of their homes has nothing to do with the inhabitants within.

He cannot help being roped into Boldwood’s enthusiasm for his Christmas party. The man is so childishly bright-eyed at the snow and the decorations and the charms of the season that Gabriel would be quite content to watch him fuss forever, delighting at every flash of the young lad in the window that skitters across the older man’s face. Bathsheba visits for lunch unexpectedly, and Boldwood is clearly torn between being pleased with her presence as she treats his house as her own and attempting to keep the decorations as a festive surprise. Gabriel cannot help laughing, just a quiet, ducked-head chuckle, at Miss Everdene’s impish wandering, flitting from room to room with Mr Boldwood chasing and chiding her as politely and ineffectually as anyone possibly could. It’s just a small laugh, but when he looks up Miss Everdene and Mr Boldwood have stopped for breath before him and are smiling triumphantly at Gabriel and each other, as if their mischief had been entirely for the purpose of amusing him.

And then, when Gabriel has been cajoled into eating lunch with them and once Bathsheba has gone home, Gabriel is presented with shaking hands and an apologetic look and absolute terror - how could he try to escape Boldwood now?

Bathsheba has this confidence that neither he nor Boldwood have. She is a lady of some status but long grown independent and slightly wild; people will like her, or they will not, but it is of no consequence to her. Gabriel has no status that is not precarious, balanced upon the whims of his employers and his animals and the cruel winds of fate. He has lost too much for no good reason to have confidence in anything beyond that which his skills have proven he can do: he can manage farms as well as any man, or better, but he has no faith in anyone else. And Boldwood wants, so desperately, not to be alone; but he has no confidence in his own ability to be liked.

So Gabriel soothes and steadies as best as he can. The people like Boldwood; they will come. _She_ loves Boldwood; she will come too.

“And you?” Boldwood says. Gabriel allows his eyes to slide up from where his fingers, now still, rest in the hollow of Boldwood’s neck. There are layers of cloth between their skins, but still a sensation of warmth and a gentle thump of Boldwood’s heart under Gabriel’s fingertips. Boldwood is looking up at him with a wide-eyed worry, and Gabriel wants to catch up his shaking hands and press kisses to his knuckles until they still, to enclose William in his arms like a great blanket to keep him from the world, to tuck that fretful face into the crook of Gabriel’s neck until the tension seeps out of him and he goes boneless and soft in his arms. “You will be there, won’t you?”

 _I would walk with you and Bathsheba to the ends of the earth. I would give up every dream of my own farm, if either of you asked me to remain your bailiff. I am giving up Bathsheba, the woman I love best in the world, to you, because you asked me to, and because I love you, and because you will make her happier than I can._ Gabriel gives Boldwood a short nod, eyes falling back to the tie because it’s so much easier to look at nearly-brushing, untouchable skin than it is to be trapped in Boldwood’s sad, hurt-heavy eyes. “I will be there.”

He talks to the village girls, and is sorry for it - he knows he’s being a rather terrible conversationalist, but he cannot seem to stop tracking Boldwood’s slightly-nervous patrolling as he checks and ensures that everyone is comfortable and happy but himself, and Gabriel cannot seem to prevent his eyes from lingering on Miss Everdene as she sits in her mourning gown and watches the dancers swirl before her with a peculiar kind of cheerful melancholy. She brightens whenever Boldwood’s circulation brings him near to her, and Gabriel is comforted to know that her suitor is not to blame; Boldwood is quite ready to adore her, the ring tucked safely in a pocket near his heart, and Bathsheba will be happier when she is adored. But there’s a sadness to her nevertheless.

Boldwood insists that they dance, and Gabriel wonders if he means it to be as much of a farewell as it feels. “Do you suppose Mr Boldwood cannot dance, or will not?” Bathsheba says eventually, after a few turns in silence.

Gabriel looks over her shoulder, but cannot see him in the mass of dancers. He can’t quite bear to look at her head-on, like a light that’s just a little too bright, a sunset so beautiful it burns the eyes. Yet he knows every line of her face, every shadow and light produced upon her fine bones by the masses of candles and mirrors. He knows the exact details of her dress, he knows the size and weight of her hand upon his shoulder, he knows the curve of her waist beneath his palm. He knows her, and he lets her go. “You shall have to teach him before your wedding,” he says, voice low.

He feels her eyes on his face like a physical force, but will not turn to her. She is silent too long, and then looks away. “Gabriel, what should I do?”

Their slow swirling waltz almost halts as Gabriel finally looks at her face. With her eyes turned from him, her intensity shaded, he can finally look at her fully; the sun eclipsed by sadness. She had burnt so brightly, when first they met: if this is Bathsheba, tamed to be wed, it brings him no joy. “You should do what is right,” he says, low and sad and sorry for saying so.

Bathsheba sighs, and her fire-eyes pin him. He’s breathless in the face of her beauty and force of mind, the set of her jaw and calm determination in her gaze. This is not Bathsheba tamed; no such thing could ever be. “And it is what I want,” she muses, mostly to herself. “But - then, this is to be our last dance, Mr Gabriel Oak.”

“It is, Miss Bathsheba Everdene.” So this is a farewell - an ending. Perhaps he should go away somewhere, America perhaps, and let them alone to be married in peace. To let himself be alone. His Mark aches with the idea. “But you shall have a great many with your husband.”

“When I have taught him how,” Bathsheba says, managing a little wry smile that coaxes a ghostly reflection from Gabriel. “Only - I dare say I am a greedy person, and I should have liked not to have to choose,” she says wistfully.

The music stops. Bathsheba pulls away, bobs a curtsey and returns to Boldwood’s side. Gabriel’s arms fall to his sides, and he remembers to stumble from the dancefloor, to find a chair into which to fall, to breathe through the curious almost-confession that Bathsheba might, possibly, like Gabriel and Boldwood both.

* * *

“You must help us, Gabriel; I am a terrible tutor, and William will insist on stepping on my toes.”

Gabriel ducks his head, proof against a smile, as Boldwood objects mildly. “I don’t mean to,” he explains, wringing his hands and sending a fond glare at his giggling fiancée. “We can’t seem to agree on which way to step.”

“I can’t say that I’ll be able to teach any better,” Gabriel says, laying his hat upon a side table carefully. It’s been many years since he had stumbled about on too-long teenage limbs with local village girls, trying too hard not to forget the steps and in consequence spending hours with pretty girls doing nothing but staring rigidly at his own feet.

Boldwood raises his eyebrows briefly in wry, amused disagreement, for which Bathsheba throws a cushion at his head as she sinks into the sofa. Their giggling proves infectious, although Gabriel smiles as much at the teasing as he does at the knowledge that they are both happy in their engagement. “Just enough for one dance,” Boldwood says, “without ruining Miss Everdene’s slippers.”

And, just like that, Boldwood has charmed Bathsheba into keeping time on the piano and Gabriel into standing beside him to better copy the careful one-two-three box; forward-right-stop, backward-left-stop. Gabriel had, once, thought he would be more resilient to charm, and has proven himself quite powerful against simpering and fluttered eyelashes. Against headstrong determination and a desire to say as she thinks, or versus low, gentle requests and the promise of a bright, secret smile, however, Gabriel is lost before he has even begun.

Boldwood gets rather good, after a while, and at his bright grin Gabriel has to look away. His eyes meet Bathsheba’s, and it’s rather a surprise to see his own helpless adoration mirrored in another’s face. Not enough of a surprise to make him quite forget himself; he drops his gaze quickly before she can see anything she shouldn’t.

“We couldn’t quite figure out the hold, either,” Bathsheba says, and Gabriel expects her to stand up and take her affianced’s hands. Boldwood clearly does too, but she offers them a grin and trips out a pretty scale on the piano. Her smile has a curious secrecy of anticipation curling in it that Gabriel cannot comprehend. “No dancing without music. Besides, my feet hurt. Mr Oak’s boots seem sturdy enough.”

Boldwood rolls his eyes fondly, but raises no objection. Gabriel has to close his eyes for a moment; it will be more contact with the other man than he could have ever hoped for, and with Bathsheba’s gaze heavy upon them, and her glinting ring a solid barrier between Gabriel and those he loves, he’s afraid he’ll give himself away. But he can muster no valid excuse, and his poor valiant heart wants so desperately to be held, and to hope, and so he goes gentle.

He can feel Boldwood’s breath against his jawline, little huffs as he concentrates or makes mistakes, but he keeps his head up proud and high. Gabriel is rather proud of him for that even as he almost wishes he wouldn’t - that he would stare at his feet like so many learners, and in so doing keep greater distance between them, and give Gabriel somewhere to look that isn’t William’s face, too close and too far from his own, and stop the feeling of someone else’s breathing against his bare skin. It’s all too much, too close, not enough, and after three successful turns of the room Gabriel stops them, as calmly as he is able to.

“There, sir,” he says, stepping back. Boldwood’s arms float for a moment, untethered, like he wasn’t quite ready to let go, and then fall to his sides and fold neatly behind his back. “Miss Everdene’s feet are safe.”

“Yes,” Boldwood says, oddly rather keen, bobbing up onto his toes and then rocking back onto his heels. He must be excited for his first dance as a married man. “Yes, I hope they are.”

“Will you be at the wedding?” Bathsheba asks. There’s a peculiar note to her deliberately unaffected tone, as if it matters more than she’d like to say whether or not his face will be in the congregation, and so he nods a little bow in concession. Gabriel’s not sure, himself, whether it will hurt more to be there or not; he supposes he will find out. “And you’ll stay for dinner?” Bathsheba presses, leaning over the keys to emphasise her point. “William’s cook is doing - something delicious to something you’ll like, he usually is. And we’d appreciate your company.”

It’s too much, too close, not enough all over again; both of them looking at him like he is wanted, treasured, and yet he cannot be. They are to be married, and damned be he who comes between a man and his wife.

Gabriel gives another short bow and picks up his hat. “Goodnight, miss. Sir.”

* * *

Gabriel has not been so angry since Bathsheba’s first wedding.

It’s a Sunday and the farmyard is devoid of its usual bustle, almost eerily still. Boldwood gives even the lowest servants Sundays to themselves and Gabriel ought really not to be here, today - he never is. It registers as just another wrongness under the coiling rage simmering on the surface of his skin.

“Gabriel - Gabriel, wait, please.” Bathsheba’s voice is rather desperate, rather cross, rather out of breath from trotting to keep up with his long, determined, furious stride. He does not wait.

“You don’t understand; you aren’t listening to me!” -and that’s rich; he has heard enough. He understands her _perfectly._ “ _Gabriel Oak, you will stop this instant!_ ”

His heels grind into the dust, legs unwilling to continue against the combined forces of Bathsheba’s command and the arrival of he whom Gabriel had come to see, drawn out by the commotion outside his sitting room window. Boldwood hasn’t even stopped to put on his coat or cravat; there’s an inkstain marring the bared white of his shirt cuffs, bare skin at his open collar, and Gabriel is sorry for this worried man, whose frowns can only deepen, and for himself for deepening them.

“What’s this? Bathsheba - Gabriel - what on earth is happening?” Boldwood’s eyes flit from wife to worker, apparently having already surmised that this is no ordinary farming matter.

“Gabriel will not listen to any word of sense,” Bathsheba says before Gabriel himself can get a word in, and his blood boils yet hotter. _Any word of sense_ -

“I should have listened, had you spoken any,” he snaps back, and Bathsheba draws herself up, haughty and regal and _lord,_ so beautiful. She suits the rolling, boiling clouds above her; the promise of thunderous, terrible rain ranged in wait upon her brow. “Sir, your _wife_ is not faithful to you.”

For a moment, Boldwood looks terribly pained - but not, Gabriel notes, surprised. He looks to his wife in search of some mitigation of this revelation, some reduction in its earth-shaking magnitude, and Bathsheba has the _gall_ to stomp her little foot in frustration and say “I tried to tell him what you had said, but-”

Gabriel scoffs. “I doubt he told you that you might ruin your reputation and his by - by seducing his workers!”

“I am not - _seducing_ anyone!” And that’s a lie, a terrible lie; Gabriel feels her hands upon his arms, her toes too close to his own, her breath on his skin and her voice in his ear, curling and soft and oh, so very tempting. What he would not have given, before she married, to have her lean up on her tiptoes and tell him she wants, she needs, she dreams in the dark and the man for her is he. “And you barely count as just one of the farmhands.”

She has no shame, this woman standing here. Her eyes burn with righteous indignation, as if he, Gabriel, is doing wrong in so accusing her whilst she remains pure as driven snow. Bathsheba’s arms are folded over her chest, her chin jutted high in the air, and whatever Gabriel had expected of this confrontation, this had not been it. His eyes flicker to Boldwood, who seems, oddly, rather less pained now; his face has morphed into the controlled tragic hopelessness and acceptance of a man who thinks he has the best that he will ever get. Gabriel wants to shake him: this does not deserve the look Boldwood had worn when Bathsheba had married Troy. He has her now, and has a right to her affections.

“So because I am your husband’s bailiff, trusted by him to manage and have a share in his affairs, I am to have a share in his wife?” Gabriel had expected more anger from Boldwood, but is managing enough to maintain the argument on his own, even in the face of indignation and resignation both. “I cannot believe this of Mr Boldwood - or of you.”

“You ought to.”

Gabriel and all of his thoughts stop dead in their tracks, hands falling to his sides. Boldwood has remained so quiet throughout that his words, once spoken, have a peculiar power, no matter how softly they might be said. Gabriel allows his eyes, til now too guilty and ashamed of how tempted he had been to look at the man he might have cuckolded, to fall at last upon Boldwood. The man’s hands are knotted before him, straining white with stress, and he seems all nerves, bundled into the shape of a man. But his eyes, dark and clear, hold fast and firm with Gabriel’s own. “Believe it of us, I mean,” he continues, with a little sad, forced smile. “I have given my wife leave to - pursue you, if she should wish to. But none other, so you need not worry about a seduction of all my workers.” Boldwood even manages traces of humour at these last words, but Gabriel cannot entirely understand them, let alone find amusement in it.

And then he thinks he does understand, and then he is angrier than ever. “She told me you do not - lie with her,” he says, voice sharp to disguise the blush rising high along his cheekbones. To discuss - to picture - to imagine William and Bathsheba abed, alone, with his broad hands on her pale, soft skin - Gabriel would rather they not know the extent of his imaginings, nor his reasons for them. Bathsheba and Boldwood both wince, as if this alone were uncomfortable for them to discuss, and Gabriel is riled further. “Are you - incapable, sir? Do you find yourself unable to perform and so - so delegate the duty to your bailiff? Send her out to be _serviced_ like your sheep?”

Boldwood’s brows tighten ominously, no longer passive and sad, and an element of Gabriel rejoices at it even as he hates himself for angering and upsetting the Boldwoods. “Excuse me,” he grinds out, furious at last. “ _That_ is neither the issue nor my attitude and I will thank you to remember it.”

Bathsheba, too, is fuming, but she never was one to miss an opportunity. “Then what is it?” Boldwood reels, as if from a blow, in confusion, but she storms on. “You claim to love me, you waited years to have me, and yet now that you do you decide that you do not - want me?” Her voice, usually so strong and self-certain, wobbles, and had her husband not stepped forward to catch up her hands Gabriel might have done something similar, something he oughtn’t.

She allows William to hold one of her small, delicate hands in both of his own. “No, Bathsheba darling, never that. You must believe me; were things only different, I-”

“We are married, William,” Bathsheba pleads softly, and Gabriel wants more than anything to be far from here and holding her other hand and exactly where he is, all at once. For a moment, he had held a forbidden fruit on the tips of his fingers; but it was nothing more than a reaction against discontent at home, and Gabriel ought not to be involved in it. “If things were different you could not have me at all. Why do you not sleep with me at night?”

“Because you do not want me!” The words seem to burst from William with force, all desperate sadness and without a glimmer of hope. Bathsheba blinks, surprised, and he squeezes her hand. “It’s alright that you do not; I do not expect it of you. You married me for my money and your guilt and-” Boldwood shrugs, smiling without any joy at all. “-I do not mind it, really. To call you my wife and to eat my meals at your elbow and to ensure your happiness - it is enough for me. I’ll not be a man who forces his wife when he is not wanted, and I shall quite close my ears when it is whispered that I am cuckolded by my bailiff, because I know you want each other and I want you to be happy.”

Gabriel reels. Bathsheba, too, looks rather stunned, but Gabriel’s head is spinning such that he might stumble; that William Boldwood might think Gabriel prefered? that he might be willing to ruin his own standing if it should make Bathsheba happy - and perhaps also Gabriel? His wording had been unclear: did Boldwood give up his wife’s bed as much for the benefit of the lover as the beloved?

“William,” Bathsheba whispers, but then she looks away and at Gabriel - too fast. She misses the tiny grimacing flinch of vindicated pain that flashes across her husband’s face when she looks, too soon, to her promised lover.

“No,” Gabriel says. “I’ll have no part in this.”

William tries a smile without success. “I told you, I do not mind it-”

“You do,” Gabriel cuts him off firmly. “I like you too well to hurt you, sir, and I dare say you-” _are beloved more than you know, are wanted desperately at morn, noon and night, are never the man to force anyone. If only you knew how willingly we would go._ “-underestimate your standing,” he manages eventually, saying too much and not enough, not half of what he might, and his face burns for it.

Gabriel turns on his heel, away from the stunned Boldwood, but is not fast enough for Bathsheba, whose arms strike faster than a snake. “Wait,” she says, hands latching onto his arm with all her unexpected strength, and Gabriel pivots around her like a planet in orbit, sending him stumbling towards Boldwood. He gets one hand up between them at the last second, planting his palm flat against the centre of William’s sternum and eliciting a choking intake of breath from him quite unequal to the force inflicted. It feels like touching a hot stove, or a flagpole in a storm: singeing and electric and warm, just as it had ever been when William had clapped a hand to his Marked shoulder or Bathsheba had brushed past the sensitive skin in passing. Only now it’s hotter, it stings more, there’s a prickle of lightning in one fingertip, and his eye falls to where the end of his middle finger rests against William’s bare skin. Against a few half-concealed curves of ink, usually hidden by tightly-buttoned shirts and neat cravats.

“No, please,” William whispers into the abrupt stillness, almost too soft to be heard.

But Gabriel’s hand moves of its own accord, fisting in the soft cotton shirt and opening out the neckline. The heartbeat under his knuckles thunders and his own catches up, synchronises, as upon William’s chest is slowly revealed a tumbling fall of willow leaves, stretching from sternum far into the depths of his shirt and waistcoat, and woven between the strands are thin, delicate sprigs of thyme.

It isn’t Gabriel’s own mark, but he’d know that thyme anywhere, etched onto his own skin as it is. And there’s the burning under his palm that feels like coming home; like a hearthfire, like the sun in the fields, like the heat of the hay as it dries. Gabriel can’t breathe, too caught up in the beautiful prickling burn of it, until the chest beneath his hand shudders in too-quick, gasping breaths and his eyes are finally drawn from the meeting point of knuckle and sternum.

Boldwood is breathing too fast, head twisted away and face a panicked twist of fear. And the sadness - oh, the sadness, as if William expects first to be beaten for the Markings on his skin and then never looked upon more. There’s that terrible glimmer in his eyes of tears he refuses to shed - for pride or fear, Gabriel could not say.

Bathsheba takes one stunned, halting step closer to them and William flinches, eyes closing as he shakes his head again in reflexive denial. “Oh, William,” she says, sounding sorrier than Gabriel has ever heard her. His mind skitters away from the thought of what this might mean to her like water on oiled cloth.

“I did not- I did not mean for you to know,” he whispers, voice too small for his usual dignity. “That I am Marked. Or that it is, I believe, you.” There’s more confidence in him now, as if he has given up all hope in entirety, now that he has come this far; his voice still cracks on _you_ , right down the middle. Half and half, for Gabriel and Bathsheba both.

Gabriel longs to take his heavy, sorrow-filled head between his palms and entangle with the curls there. He wishes to trace the lines of willow and thyme, top to toe, and press his face against the heat encased in Boldwood’s broad frame. He wants Bathsheba, too, and to watch her entice smiles from her husband. But his body will not heed him; he remains planted and rooted, unable to soothe their pain.

Bathsheba weaves in where he cannot, and takes Gabriel’s breath away. “Oh, my William,” she says, and Gabriel’s thoughts stick on something else as well, until he could not move or think for all the weeping in the world. She has drawn her shirtwaist over her head, standing tall and dignified enough for a queen in a corset and skirts, and he must be dreaming but it feels so _real._ “If only you had come to me, as a husband ought.” She offers him soft and sorry words, with the slightest of smiles, and disentangles his fingers from one another carefully. Bathsheba carries his hand reverently, as if it were fragile and precious beyond measure, and places it gently upon her collarbone, and the wreath of willow and rue that encircle her pale neck like a shawl lain carefully about her shoulders.

William’s eyes startle open with a gasp at the sensation of superheated soft skin beneath his hand and Gabriel breathes sharply in as a shock runs through him like lightning grounding against a tree. “You love me,” William says into the surprised silence, and Gabriel closes his eyes and sways a little: at the sad expectation that she did not, and at the soft and brilliant joy in his realisation that she does.

Bathsheba laughs like she may very well cry. “Yes! Yes, William, I do.”

William’s answering laugh is little and sweet and thoroughly surprised, wet around the edges with surplus sorrow, and Gabriel finds that he’s smiling without meaning to, just because the people he loves love each other. “I thought you did not.” William’s thumb runs along the sharp line of her collarbone absently and Bathsheba shivers under the summer sun.

“Perhaps I did not always,” she breathes, quite unable to take her dark eyes from his. “But I do - and will - love you very well, if you’ll let me.”

Gabriel feels abruptly intrusive, between these married two, and begins to unclench his tight fist in William’s shirt as preparation for his flight. But then, as soon as his unwilling fingers begin to loosen, Bathsheba and William snap their gazes to him and pin him like a butterfly. It looks like his dream and yet not, too real around the edges, and the vision floors him for long enough that William can reach up and gently curl his fingers around Gabriel’s wrist and hold his hand there. Gabriel’s hand flattens against his chest anyway, but now to eek every inch of contact from William’s skin; he had not asked it to, and frowns at it slightly for disobedience.

“I really do not mind it,” William says, “that Bathsheba should love you too.” He sounds, now, as if he is being almost honest. “I should like it if you were both happy.”

Boldwood is being truly gracious about the willow curling near to his wife’s heart, as if Gabriel cannot see the same leaves cascading beneath his shirt and cannot wonder if William, too, does not love them both; and then Gabriel remembers that Bathsheba and William have not, in fact, seen all three parts of the puzzle, as he has. He grips the back of his shirt with his spare hand and hauls it over his head, leaving it hanging by one sleeve from the arm trapped between his own body and William’s, and stands before them with rue and thyme spiralling up his bicep. He notes, in the shocked silence that follows this abrupt and silent demonstration, that two new rue flowers have bloomed since the morning and that the thyme is covered in minuscule, perfect blossom. That, too, matches the curling, flowering Marks he can see, bared to the warming sun.

“Oh,” Bathsheba breathes, her long fingers reaching out to gently trace the line of herbs and flowers. He shivers, goosebumps rising in her wake, and a curious jolt runs through the three of them, like an electrical circuit completed.

“Oh,” William echoes softly, and Gabriel has to breathe deeply in the face of such astonishment that he might see what he wants and have it, too.

“The thyme is for me, then, I suppose,” Bathsheba muses, still holding her husband’s hand to her bare shoulder and running her fingertips up and down the lines of Gabriel’s muscle. “The willow for Gabriel, and-”

“-and I am rue,” William says, a touch of confused hurt in him. “For regret.”

Gabriel finds his words, at last. “Herb-of-grace, my mother called it.” His voice is husky, where his tongue has stuck to the roof of his mouth, and William looks up at him under his lashes in some surprise.

“And I do regret,” Bathsheba adds, “that you did not know sooner that I love you.”

William closes his eyes a moment, and then nods, and opens them with a face fixed. He has slid back into _this is the best I can expect_ and Gabriel cannot, will not have it. “I love you, too. Sir.”

William blinks in surprise - not unreasonable, as Gabriel had not quite intended to say it so abruptly - and Bathsheba giggles, pressing her smiling face into their joined hands on her shoulder. “Gabriel - you might not call me _sir,_ then,” he says at last, frowning and smiling like he cannot quite understand what is happening to him.

“Do you not like to think that you are - what was it - _seducing your workers_?” Bathsheba teases.

William glares at her without any heat, trying not to smile himself. “No,” he says, rather less sharply than he had likely intended, and Gabriel laughs, quite unable to help it in the slightest.

Bathsheba wraps her hand around his Mark, the burning now soothed to a comfortable glow of contentment, and uses this handhold to tiptoe up and press her lips to his cheek. It’s ever so brief, ever so chaste, but it sends sparks throughout his skin; she bestows similar treatment upon William, and it is just as pleasant to watch his eyes fall closed and his face lapse into a soft smile. He opens his eyes to beam his sunshine smile at Bathsheba, and then Gabriel; and then he picks up Gabriel’s hand and presses his grin into its palm. His lips trace, gently, _I love you too_ , and then Gabriel can feel the glow of that grin through his skin, and where it reflects brightly upon regal, beaming Bathsheba, and where it falls, finally, upon his helplessly-smiling self.

**Author's Note:**

> there are reports that sergeant troy was, in fact, a strong swimmer, and would have survived his dip were it not for a person who looks suspiciously like your author in a small rowboat repeatedly smacking the drowning man with an oar and saying something like "leave the nice people alone, you thieving gambling bastard."
> 
> these reports are vastly exaggerated.
> 
> for the curious, though, troy's mark to represent fanny is a red rose on his hip, and fanny's mark to represent him is a coil of rose thorns around her wrist.


End file.
